Beeyyond Cool

This article talked about cool; what is cool, who is cool, how can one spot or be cool? It also seems that there are no clear cut answers to these questions either. This article specifically dealt with which shoes were cool at certain points and the people who buy them. These coolhunters go to the most fashion forward / larger populated cities and study the people that go in and out of the stores seeing what they do or do not buy and from time to time testing or interviewing people they think look cool to determine whether or not their products are a hit or bust. It's an interesting concept. Everyone has seen the cool kids at school sporting some accessory and then trying convince their mothers to take them to the mall to go and get it too. However, most of the time, those kids are not the cool kids who started the trend, they are the early followers from which everyone else follows behind. Usually, by the time everyone else has jumped on the bandwagon and bought whatever it is they think will make them stand out as fashionable the originators will be bored and begin the search again for the next hot thing. We who are not deemed cool or fashion forward, in essence the followers, are at the mercy of the cool people and we just have to go with their flow because there will always be that next hot thing for someone to find and make trendy, for someone else to see and think that they too must have it until everyone has it and then the people who started the chain reaction find something else for us to all run out and buy.

Dumb Google

After reading the article, Carr brings up a lot of interesting points about the possibly detrimental effects from simply "googling" any information he'd like to look up and finding it instantaneously. I think I can definitely relate to what he's saying as far as finding information online goes. If I need to find a specific piece of information and I "google" it, I always look for the shortest and most specific article possible. I would also agree that I really don't enjoy reading long articles online if I'm simply trying to look something up. I would have to disagree in many respects, though. I would not say that Google has impeded my ability to read a lengthy article or book whatsoever, because when I choose to read either of those, it is usually out of choice and for personal enjoyment. In fact, I actually read more now than I ever have in my life, but that probably has more to do with the fact that I'm an English major. Overall, I believe that Google is more of a helpful tool than something that is harming us in the long-run. I would have to say that Google probably causes people to be lazier nowadays due to the fact that anything in the world can be looked-up with the a few punches into a keyboard and a click, but like I said, I think the ability to share information is an extremely useful tool, and does more good than harm.

inclass: Google

1. What is changing is how easy it is to find information online. This is making people lazy. You can search something and find exactly what you’re looking for in a matter of seconds. Also this is causing people to lose their ability to concentrate because they can read a small paragraph and have their questions answered, or summarized so quickly.
2. The convenience of it all. You can find everything so quickly.
3. “But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.” “You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
4. That people are going to rely too much on the internet to do the thinking for them. He is also concerned about losing self-reliance.

Google or no Google?

Carr starts off by stating the meaning of the article very clear, that the way we think now a days is changing because as stated by him, "I used to be able to pick up an article or book and read it with ease," with that statement it seems that people today can't sit down for long and read a book without being distracted by something else. Carr goes on to speak about the ease of finding information on the internet. I agree that yes information is in fact hard to find but also it does depend on the reader and how they perceive the information. One of his examples where he said in the British library they have online computers to look up stored databases of articles and books. The concern with that was that everyone who looked up information would only skim read and not complete the article, and that if they couldn't find anything that they liked they would just skip it and move on to the next article. All in all yes Google has made people lazy in finding and interpreting information but when it comes down to it, it depends on the focus of the person as a reader.

Google stupid questions

1. Carr's mind has changed based on technology and how we have come to view technology. He mentions how he and his friends can no longer sit and read lengthy material they just skim through things because technology, namely the Internet has made access to information so easy and quick. 2. The Internet has allowed mass amounts of information to be easily accessible and all in one spot. New ideas, revisions of old ideas, etc. show that information is constantly changing. The Internet allows things to be updated nonstop. There is also a constant flow of ideas from person to person on the Internet because we have access to so much of each other's stuff. 3. Carr mentions a study from the University of London about online research habits. The study showed that the Internet has created a "new way of reading" including "power browsing." He also mentions The New York Times now has short snippets of the news for it's readers; alluding to the fact the a popular piece of media (NY Times) had to recognize and conform to the way people now read & think in order to remain appealing to thier audience. 4. Carr is worried that we will automatically start to automatically rely on the mass amounts of information the Internet and Google provides to us. He mentions how we will become like "pancakes," wide and flat. So essentially, we will have a wide knowledge base full of mass amounts of facts and whatnot but we will be flat, meaning that we will have no depth to our thoughts. Carr suggests that our intelligence will become "artificial intelligence" which is what Google wants to do with the Internet.

in class google questions

1. when the author says that his mind is "changing", he is talking about the effect that google has on the function of his brain. The more we use the internet to research and find information, the quicker our brains expect to find and understand information all the time. He allutes to the fact that at one point, people had to spend time looking up data in books and at the library whereas now we can hop online, google the topic and find it in minutes.

2. Since Carr is a writer, he finds using the Web to be very helpful. He says that he can conduct research that at one point took days to complete, in a matter of minutes today. Outside of work, Carr finds the Web great for entertainment and often finds himself watching videos, listening to music and reading blog posts.

3. Carr and his friends believe the internet is shaping their ability to focus. There was a time where sitting down and focusing on larger pieces of writing was no big deal. Thanks to the internet now-a-days, however, they find it difficult to focus for lengthy periods of time to read. I think this is an example of how medium is shaping it's users because its not only affect their learning capabilities, but its also affect their chances of success in life.“I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print" (Carr p. 6).

4. We think the Carr's biggest concern in reguards to the internet being everywhere is that it's becoming our everything. "The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV" (Carr p. 18) We think Carr is referring to the fact that we as a society are putting all of our "eggs in one basket". We are relying on the internet for way too much.

Is Google making us stupid?

1: The amount of information that is out there on the internet seems intoxicating because it breaks our focus on what we really use it for. The way we perceive information is changing because when we look up topics online we rarely spend the time to actually remember it, but rather just reference it since we could easily look it up again at anytime.

2: The internet is one of the most convenient information databases to look up practically anything that you find interesting. Your able to post opinions about anything, speak freely, explore any topic in great detail. Pretty much you can live in the internet. The tools out there are vast and rising, as well as the ability to purchase anything that you would need to live from the internet. I'm pretty sure Amazon.com has virtually anything the consumer would need.

3: British library offers access on online journals. People who read these articles that are offered online make people impatient because they end up just skimming through a few pages of the article and then if they can't find what they want they just skip to the next website. Reading online causes people to interpret text, which makes the mental connection that forms when we read in detail without being distracted, makes us largely disengaged.

4: A big concern of his seems that Google tries to lead us to distractions, as a way for companies who sponsor Google to make money. Some of the information is right there at your fingertips so since you can look it up so quick, he says then why bother even trying to remember it.

In class, google questions

1.) His mind is changing by the way that he reads and processes the information that he is getting from the article. 2.) The ability to find what you are looking for as fast as possible. 3.) "I had almost lost the ability to read and absorb a long article" -Bruce Friedman 4.) Since google is so easy to use and always readily available, we are becoming very dependent on it and it is making us so used to it, and become less familiar with the old way of just reading.

Google Stupid Questions

1. Carr says his mind is changing by the way he gathers information. He used to be able to read articles in depth and want to investigate and find out more about the subject. Now he finds himself having a hard time reading more than a few paragraphs without losing his concentration.


2. He says that researching through the internet is obviously much faster than researching through a library. What was once done in days and weeks can now be done in hours.


3. Carr talks about one his proffessors that once was an avid reader who now does all his readings through the internet. Another example is the author who switched from writing with a pen to with a typewriter. After switching it was apparent that this author's writing style significantly changed.


4. We think that Carr is worried that we will rely on Google too much and that it will do all the thinking for us. He fears that eventually we will lose our original thoughts.

In-Class Google Questions

1. When Carr says that his mind is changing, one thing that is changing is his ability to focus on books or long articles. The internet allows us to browse and get the gist of information with out sitting and reading entire essays or books.

2. Carr cites research and hyperlinks as benefits of the internet. As a journalist, search engines put research and information at his finger tips and, unlike footnotes in books that just point in the direction of related sources, links do the job for him, shooting him across the web.

3. Carr illustrates his statement that media can shape the process of thought as well as supply the stuff of thought in his expectation of information in other media to be presented in a quick and clear stream, as it is on the web. This explains why he has become impatient with reading whole books.

4. It would seem that Carr is concerned that Google's omnipresence is making us stupid. He shows much interest in the way in which it changes our thought process and the way we skim and get the gist of information.

Is Google making us stupid?

I do agree with Carr in a way that Google is making us stupid, but I feel that Google is just re-training our brains in a much lazier way. He says that, "The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon." I do not fully agree with that statement because it is not fully the internet’s fault, because I have this issue every time I read. I have always had that fight to stay focused when reading and even when I was focused I still had trouble remembering what I had just read and it took a longer time for me to read. With the advancements in technology and the high speeds of the internet, now Google tries to "guess" what you are about to search, then it lists thousands of web links that pertain to what you have typed in. This just makes it easier to find what you looking for and eliminates the need to have to search through numerous amounts of books to find what you are looking for. Or if you do not know the answer to a question you can just type it into the Google search bar and after reading the short bit that is put under each link, along with bolded words that are related to your search, you can find a website that almost always will have what you are looking for. Google is just letting us not have to use our brains to think very hard or have to read lengthy books or articles to find an answer. Therefore, our brains get used to being lazy and people do not want to have to think when Google can just have the solution in just a few seconds.

Google dependent

I work at a small web design company during the summer months, and I know firsthand just how powerful and systematic the Google engine is. On every site that is made, we use Google analytics to track what the visitor searched for to get on the page, how long they have been on every page, and which pages they have visited. From there we react accordingly, often to get the visitor to the product pages and checked out if that is what the nature of the business is. The end result is more organic than artificial to me. The web really reacts to what people do.

Reflecting on how we do things is very worthwhile. Just today I sat down and listened to a new album without doing anything else. It is such a better experience to focus on the music instead of a game, work, or some other project. The internet does amazing things for us, but sometimes at the cost of our thinking skills. It's important to recognize this-- maybe set some time aside to practice lateral thinking, or simply fixing a problem on our own. Too often people try to point the finger at something other than ourselves to explain what we are lacking. The argument may be logically sound, but it shouldn't sway anyone to do anything other than take responsibility and find a solution.

Based off of my claims in my first essay, I'll argue that Google makes us smarter, but more dependent. The internet is becoming more-so an attachment to our own intelligence, turning us into a kind human cyborg. We live and see things differently because of it, and the favorably of it is for each individual to judge. For me, the benefits outweigh the negative consequences. The only thing I fear is where the road will take us in the effect of Google's entry into the smart phone market, and the ramifications of net neutrality. The best thing to do is see the picture clearly, instead of being blinded by fear and only sensing futility and dread.

Side note: The Nietzche reference in the article was very cool-- I knew there was skepticism about his latest writing with the declining of his health and his sister's influence, but I never knew about his change to the typewriter. I would dismiss any changes in his style simply on his unstable mental condition alone.

Stupid Google or Google Stupid?

This article was not very hard to understand; the author was making a point which many people have made throughout the years which is as technology improves or excels, we as humans regress to a more primitive state. All of the great philosophers or thinkers, from the ancient Greeks to the modern theorists of today, have a skeptical outlook on technology and its advancements in our world. People as a whole either wish to improve themselves to a point of unrealistic perfection or do not know enough about the things they tamper with just to make life as easy as possible. Either way, the reasoning behind this is disconcerting. All of the futuristic books most people read in high school like Ayn Rand's Anthem, George Orwell's 1984, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World warn us of things that are bound to happen once we have become too dependent upon those things we create yet we still have people in the world, like the creators of Google, who wish to ignore these prophetic warnings in order to create artificial intelligence to supplement or replace our actual intelligence. It seems like we are or have been entering an age similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, where we become so driven by vice - finding the easy way out through quick answers and unnecessary consumerism from ridiculous advertisements - that eventually we will be wiped out not necessarily by God but by the machines we have created to be more powerful and greater than ourselves thus trying to put these machines in place of God.

Google

After reading Carr’s article about Google, I have two opinions. The first thing is that I agree that I sometimes have trouble reading articles that are of a significantly longer length, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the resources available to me on the internet. The other thing is that I feel Google has had the opposite effect on me than Carr is saying in his article. For me and for some of my friends that I have asked, feel that Google hadn’t made us dumber but we learnt things from Google. The easy access allows us to instantly find something out we were wondering instead of having to go somewhere, take out a book and scour the book for the info that were looking for. Carr came off like someone who just misses the way things used to be.

Carr

I agree with Carr. I too find myself unable to concentrate on long pieces of writing, unless I am completely into what I am reading, like a book I’m reading for my own enjoyment. If I am reading something online I tend to want to surf the web or get on my Facebook. If I am reading a book it is different, I could read the whole thing without thinking about getting online. Now if that said book was online, well I don’t think I would have this same dedication. I think it’s funny how long Carr’s article is and the fact that it is online to be honest I had a very hard time reading this. It just dragged on and on and had too many examples. I think he could have got his message across faster and more effectively, to people like he is describing, if he would have had said this in less words. His message is fairly clear, that the Internet is making us less inclined to read large passages without being distracted. He make’s a good point about how easy it is to use the internet for research rather than go to the library and read through journals and books searching for something you could get with one click online. This is very true and why would you waste your time at a library when you could find what you need online is just one click. Although when it comes to books to read for enjoyment, I prefer a hard copy to an online copy. Reading material off a computer screen isn’t only distracting but it hurts my eyes after awhile. Also like Carr said, nothing compares to pen and paper.

Google.

While reading this article, I was noticing a few things that he was mentioning that I was doing that very minute. Nicholas Carr talks about the intention span and not being able to pay attention while reading a book or an article. I have that problem all the time, whether the articles online or if its in a book or magazine. I feel like a lot of people have a hard time focusing in general, and I don’t feel like google is the issue. I think google is a very important website that all students use including elementary students through graduates. I feel like people depend on google, which I don’t think is always a good thing because it does lack the intelligence of ones brain. About 10 years ago we would have to go to the library and read through 10+ books just to find the information your looking for, and while you do that you come across more information that could be helpful or couldn’t be helpful but you still are learning and taking in more information opposed to looking up a specific answer and getting hundreds of websites for that one specific title or phrase that you were looking for. So through reading this article, I feel like googles a good source of information but it does lack the importance of education and further learning.

Carr article

I enjoyed this article very much and it really got me thinking about the impact the Internet has on our way of thinking. Carr mentions, as do other writers he talks with, about the difficulties of delving into a long book, reading lengthy newspaper articles, journals, etc. and I connected instantly! In high school, when I didn't spend nearly as much time researching and having to find lots of information that wasn't provided in print for me already, I would read books all of the time for pure joy. I would also read the newspaper and think a lot about current events and my stance on them. Since I started college though, I spend a lot more time on the Internet browsing the web for information. So now, as much as I want to enjoy books and the newspaper for pure enjoyment and contemplation, I just cannot. I get bored so easily and I find myself skimming newspaper articles and books and completely missing the point or deeper meaning/implications. I become so frustrated with myself, but thanks to Carr and his essay, I have now been provided with a scapegoat: the Internet itself. The Internet will never go away. Life could never go back to the way is was even just a couple decade ago, but before my time and the next generation and thereafter will only know how to access information through the Internet. I'm sure one day books won't even be published anymore because they are so easily accessible online. But that isn't even the saddest part, the saddest part is that books and most written material will become so straightforward and easy to access that people will stop challenging themselves to dig deeper and find more meaning and answers (to questions they probably aren't even asking because deep thinking will be diminished). There was a mention in the text about how deep reading and deep thought were "indistinguishable" and I agree with that very much so. Our incessant need to be stimulated all the time is ridiculous. My little brother will be playing on the computer and will have to wait a whole 3o seconds for something to load...but of course he can't sit there and do nothing, he actually gets up and turns the T.V on! It disgusts me to see these kinds of things. I am a thinker, I like to sit and ponder life's big questions, the injustice in the world, the imbalance between the rich and the poor, etc. it is all something I like to think about and discuss. Yet the Internet has taken this away from me to some extent, because people just want hard facts quick and easy. We don't want to sit around and talk or read about things we think have no real answer or that would take too long to answer/fix in the first place. Just because we are filled with lots of random information "like a computer" doesn't make us smart or intellectual or philosophical or whatever, it just means that we are a machine filled with lots of codes. The Internet is doing to our thinking what McDonald's did to dinner...ruining it.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Overall the article makes very clear arguments as to how the technology world is colliding head-on with the intellectual world. I honestly don't think the internet is hindering anyone's mental capabilities. I feel with all this information right in front of you, people tend to become lazy. They find the information they want instantaneously, browsing website after website, not even bothering to read the articles in full. It has everything to do with the fast-paced society that technology has forged and nothing to do with mankind's stupidity, but laziness. Technology, specifically the internet can be both a useful everday tool for quick research, but I feel that it should be used in moderation. I do believe people today are becoming more and more attention deficit. Whether the internet is truly to blame is beyond me. I can make all the speculations I want, but it still holds strong that society moves extraordinarily way too fast. The internet is convenient in many ways and doesn't necessarily cause stupidity, but unintended laziness when when it comes to reading and comprehending.

Google

I found this to be a very interesting article. I would have to disagree with some of the things that Carr had to say though. He was saying that he is not able to concentrate anymore because of the Internet. I kind of find that hard to believe. I have trouble on concentrating what I am reading pretty much all the time. The only time I am able to really concentrate is when I am super interested in the thing that I am reading. If I don’t really care about it or find it interesting to me at all, the chances are im going not going to want to read it at all, or just zone off while I was trying to read whatever it was. So I do not think I would blame that on the internet or google. I really do not think that has anything to do with it. I think it all has to deal with something that interests you. I feel like if you have anything that you find very interesting you are going to be able to read it very easily and not get distracted by anything or anyone. So I do not think that google is making us stupid at all. I think it is just an easier way for us to find any kind of information that we want to find quickly and very easy. Google just makes everything that we need to find short and sweet and to the point and its quick and easy and that’s why we find it so useful and turn to it everyday.

Google

Nicholas Carr starts the article by pointing out that he used to be a ble to sit down and read books or essays somewhat easily. Now after his extensive use of the internet he finds it very difficult to keep his attention during a reading. After asking other writers they also seemed to have the same problem. I have always had trouble paying attention during long readings but I have also always been exposed to resources through the internet. I have never really had to do extensive research. All the information I have ever needed has been at my fingertips. I understand how the internet could ruin one's patience. Someone who once had to spend days looking through books and research can now have everything they want in seconds. Who would want to go back?

Google

I think that media and the way we look up and view information has definitely changed. Now you can find almost anything on the Internet. I have also stopped reading books because you can find one online in just seconds. Everything has become conveniently easier. I don't believe that technology or Google has made us stupid it has just expanded the way we do things. I think that he feels this way because he and his associates didn't grow up with as much technology that we have now. So its understandable. I thought the research study that The university of London conducted on the study of online research habits was interesting to me because of what they found. They used the term new forms of "reading" which was intriguing to me because I think that we all use the same form of reading. Whether its skimming or reading something completely through and through we are still reading we just choose to take it in and interpret it the way we want to. I do agree that sometimes I don't read things all the way about a certain subject because we can just go online and find out more about with just a couple of clicks instead of just reading through a whole book or an article. We use the Internet to find information. Mostly little things so that we can better understand them. Unlike books the information is always being updated and changed. Sometimes I do wish that I could be able to sit and read a whole book and get a complete meaning. I think that our generation has become so lazy with all the technology that we have it ridiculous. I do wonder what it would be like if the Internet and computers was never invented we would probably have a lot more really smart people.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I do believe this is a fair question. Google has made searching for information a million times easier than it used to be. When researching for a paper, I am positive that most students (including myself) refer to Google to find resources for them. We don't really have to know the Dewey Decimal System and look through stacks of books at the library; we just have to tell Google what to tell us about. Our ability to find information on our own has definitely been reduced by the ease of using search engines, but I think most people would still be able to find things on their own if they had to.

The commercials for Bing definitely contribute to the idea that Google makes us stupid. But, the pitiful people in the commercials suffer from "search-overload," not necessarily from stupidity.

However, I think that Google actually makes us smarter. Information is literally at our fingertips. Google brings the information we want and need right to us without much hassle. We can learn about anything that we want to through Google. How can such a great tool make us stupid?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

If we don't know something, what do we do?-We Google it! Google is like this all-knowing and universal god whose got all of our answers. I Google something almost everyday I'd say, and I think it's such a great tool. I like the fact that people have taken so much interest in doing research on the web, but I agree with Carr and his annoyance with what Google has done to our brain wiring. The author brings up some good points. He mentioned that throughout history men have been concerned that "easy availability" to written information will make people unmotivated to exercise their memory. So this problem with humanity has been going on since Socrates roamed the earth!


'"The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers."'

I think that once we extract and take what we need from an article or website, we move on quickly, and drop it like a hot potato. The Google mindset does make it harder to sit down and read a book because we are just used to moving on in a matter of minutes. Society would rather skim 10 articles in the time it takes to completely read 2 or 3 articles. We wanna learn the most in the least amount of time, but what happens is we end up learning a bunch of vague and unfocused information.

google

Our reading this week about whether or not google is chipping away at our minds was an interesting theory. I think the idea that google is teaching its users' brains to expect learning in a short period affects more of the older crowd. To my generation, the internet is all we know. I feel that from day one of school how to use a computer. We've never really had to use our brains to it's full capacity like the generations before us. I think the internet is a wonderful tool and I learn so much from spending a few hours online researching various topics. I'm not sure that if we didn't have the internet that I would take time to look up information I'm interested in learning more about. For older generations who are still slowly learning how to use the computer may not understand because they grew up learning a different way. They spent their time in school gathering information from books in the library to write a paper whereas students today spend half the time googling the research and type their papers.

Changing How We Read and Write

The scene is a junior high classroom, the year - 2006. Seated beside one another, girls attempt to pass notes with out being noticed; casually reaching down, grabbing the folded paper, stuffing it inside a notebook and checking their surroundings before unfolding it to read. Inside, what would you find? Besides smudged cursive and gossip - textspeak was also a common sight. My friends often used "lol" or "haha" in notes. Emoticons were making their way from our instant message conversations at night, to our notes during class.

Being junior high girls, of course, it isn't all that shocking that silly things like smiley faces made their way into our notes - but it's sometimes hard to imagine writing to someone with humor and not including an "lol" or "haha," as so often was seen on Myspace at the time, and is seen today on Facebook. The way we communicated was immediately changed with the introduction of textspeak into our lives. This is a similar phenomena to that which Carr is speaking of in his article, however, I'm not sure we should judge it so harshly.

Shakespeare to Twain to the writers of tomorrow - language is always changing. That is not to say we should be allowed to use "lol"'s in school work, but I don't think it should be so frowned upon that we are shaping our own language - we are not the first to do so, and certainly won't be the last. I do agree with Carr that I feel my attention growing shorter and shorter for books and long articles - including his. The information available at the tip of our fingers on the Internet isn't all bad, though, as he pointed out: "A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after." And, in the same way, writing papers for class has become a lot easier for us students.

Googling Our Minds Away

This article caught my attention because I understand what the author is trying to say, but also because I want to defend technology. Earlier this week, I was discussing communication with my brother and he said he thought technology was destroying interaction, conversation, and communication between people. We were becoming lazier, becoming more antisocial while in person, and making us impatient. I know this is true because I have seen it and I am also guilty of this. But I still defended technology saying it helps us get information faster when we need it. I believe the same thing goes for Google.

Yes, it makes us lazier but we are able to find crucial or sometimes useless information faster. Students are able to type final papers in a matter of hours before the deadline without even having to skim the pages of a book. I don't think Google is a Bad thing. It is helping us find what we need without having to search through futile text and information to get to our final destination. The author complained that he gets bored with reading long text because he is so used to having short spurts of text with his answer/information/etc in it right then and there. Well, sorry to be so rude but I think that is his own fault. I have been using Google since I learned about the internet and I still can sit down and read a book. I can read through pages and pages because I have patience and because I have discipline. I switch between using the internet and using books to find information, too, so maybe my brain hasn't bee rewired like others' have.

Author Nicholas Carr also explains that he is looking for distractions while he skims through articles and papers online. I believe, once again, this can be caused by the lack of restraint. When I have something I need to do or read, I will turn off all other things and focus on that project and that alone. Cell phone is off, music is either soft (close to inaudible) or off and I am able to focus on the text. Of course people will look for distractions when performing tasks that aren't much fun or exciting but that should not be blamed on Google. Nor the internet in general.

This entire article made it sound like someone was trying to place the blame on someone other than ourselves for our laziness and inability to focus. Sometimes the internet and technology can help us divert our attention but it is not the scape goat. It is not technology's fault we are so bored easily. People just need to do everything in moderation- using real books instead of Googling/Binging/Yahooing (are those last two even verbs?), shutting down our power and having face-to-face interactions, and writing with pen and paper instead of hoping the computers will type our papers and thoughts themselves. Technology isn't the enemy, it's a friend. We're just trying to prosecute the wrong person/thing instead of taking the blame for our own lack of control.

"GooGle"

This article was good and really got me thinking. At first when they were talking about how people are not able to read long articles or even books anymore, I found this to be very true. The last time I had read a book was all the way back in high school and the only reason I read it was because I had too. Reading long articles or “deep thinking” has pretty much been forgotten in our day. As I read more of this article, I started to begin thinking about how much longer I was going to have to sit here and read this, and almost instinctively looked for distractions. But, I kept on reading. I personally do not like the idea of artificial intelligence, I feel like in a way it could be good, but in many ways, it will be bad, especially if a fake human brain is made with a robot controlling it. There is no telling what the possibilities of what it could do to us as a human race. It is kind of scary really. I think it would be cool, if there were a way that all of the information available on the internet could be linked to our brain. That would be interesting, and could probably help us solve some problems in the world that we never had thought we could explain. I also, feel like it is hard for me to read anything that is longer than a couple pages, and I start to get bored very easily. One quote that really grabbed my attention was” That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.” This quote is scary and really opens your mind to thinking about everything a persona read’s and what you should think about it. Overall, this was a great article and I might read it again.